The Work Experience Conundrum

Are internships now so commonplace that value should be found elsewhere on the young person’s CV?

“Make sure that you go into the offices and sit there until someone comes and sees you. Don’t move. Don’t let them move you. Go in with a box of chocolates. Any journalist worth their salt will wonder what you are doing sat there, and, of course, be intrigued thanks to their irrepressible desire for those chocolates just sat there.”

This was some of the first advice I had regarding work experience and internships. The bold ‘Don’t-Hold-Back’ approach to get you through the door and into the chairs upstairs. It is one of many methods often advised for all young graduates and students pursuing any number of given career paths: send endless emails, update your LinkedIn profile, and shamelessly tweet away at important professionals until they notice you. As long as by your early 20s, you can boast a plethora of experience in the industry, an unrivalled portfolio of work and relevant employment.

The importance of experience and internships should never be doubted. Nowadays, any job application is underlined with phrases like ‘must have relevant work experience’, or ‘must demonstrate a working knowledge of the field’, or ‘must be able to provide examples of previous employment in this area.’

The myriad of means by which this same vague and crippling statement is recycled and reused is a seemingly virtual slap in the face, even to those with previous background in their chosen area.

The High Fliers’ graduate job survey reinforces this stigma, announcing that the modern graduate stands ‘little chance’ of success without this work experience.

Yet is this prerequisite a restricting and increasingly unfair method to assess applicants? A little over two decades ago, the very idea of work experience was practically unheard of, and now it is ubiquitous on the CVs and cover letters of the recently graduated.

In the same manner that a degree has fast become no real indication of whether the candidate is suitable for employment, could the endless amounts or experience really be a similar mirage, that needs to be culled? Employers are increasingly faced with shiny internships that scream ‘dedication and determination’. Yet for all the bolstering experience provides on a CV, it is not necessarily an indication of how one would fit permanently into a team.

Overcoming this new crisis is something that should be tackled. Of course, it would mean that other valid arguments against work experience – such as the limits of working for free restricting access, and the increasingly competitive nature meaning there are fewer chances for such work – would be vindicated. But the real measure would be to realign the work experience balance, and reintroduced other focuses, prominent before the mid-90s.

Part time jobs and student employment should be regarded just as beneficial as direct involvement in a chosen area for a limited period of time. The skills and competencies gained from these activities are often a more direct indication of the long term ways a person works in a team and reacts to different situations – like the time I accidentally managed to spill a new bottle of milk over a customer for whom I was making a coffee.

Customer service, tactful dealings with difficult or awkward customers and initiative all come to the forefront in a permanent job, where one’s own direction, business skill and awareness of the area come into play, independent of the ‘experience’ umbrella. These candidates have seen first-hand how to operate a business, integrate fully into a team and deal with customer complaints or queries that leaves them better equipped to handle unusual situations in the future.

Of course, experience in your own area of interest is vital, and should remain important in the application process. But now that companies are inundated with almost comparable experiences as well as similar degrees, other practical experience needs to be reinstated as an essential recruitment tool.

Not that I will deny how far a box of chocolates can get you in breaking the ice with a prospective employer.

That Budget is Crackers, Gromit!

Following the (unsurprising) budget announcements last Wednesday, there has been a great deal of debate as to whether it is a budget for the millions or for the millionaires, the effect of the supposed ‘granny-tax’ and heated divisions regarding the 50p tax rate.

However, there has been little talk of what the budget may mean for students and the younger generations, whose job prospects are bleak and whose applications are riddled with the ‘experience vs qualifications’ conundrum that blights so many in the 16-25 age bracket.

Indeed, the budget announcements appear to do little in the way of helping these frequently marginalised groups of society. So often do people talk of clichés that the young are the decision makers of tomorrow, and yet this truth does very little in our favour. In fact, the budget just serves to make us all the more cynical.

With the increase in the price of alcohol and cigarettes, no longer are the old havens of retreat safe: rather the stress-relief of students nationwide is in jeopardy of becoming another ill-affordable luxury. Alright, it may ensure a few less damaged livers and a couple of higher-capacity lungs, but these items symbolise a retreat from the embittered adult world that students sooner or later have to enter. So it stands to reason that many young adults may opt to still purchase the alcohol at the expense of proper foodstuffs. In an increasingly saturated graduate market, forgetting the misery of an ever more ‘worthless’ degree, spiralling debts and fewer job prospects is only facilitated by the odd pint or seven.

Besides, students will be all the more inclined to stay inebriated with the introduction of the pasty tax: no more sobering cheap foods to end the night out. That questionable imported meat, at questionable prices, that smells so aromatic at 3am will no longer linger around dorms the next day. Perhaps the next move would be to add extra taxes to beans and bread so as to capitalise off the staple beans on toast?

If sobriety sticks, the lonely nights in deliver the promise of, well, Wallace and Gromit, which is ever so entertaining and pivotal in the lives of 16-25 year olds. That’s smashing, Osborne (or crackers. Pick one).

However, rentals of everyone’s fave pooch inventor and his gullible owner may be all the pockets will stretch to with the freeze of minimum wage for 18-20 year olds. Of course, this decision follows the logic that with a stopper on increasing wages, more jobs will be created for the young people. Newsflash: The UK is back in recession. Scrap that last.

So dust off the old bottles of Jack for some measly measures that will hopefully make cartoon capers all the more appealing. Resounding cheers from the ‘enfranchised’ under-25s everywhere.

That is cheers from the under 25s when London is vandalised once again. Essentially, amidst the squashed bottom and the squeezed middle, there is the forgotten generation and this budget does little to help any of these groups. This is all the more concerning this week because inquests have ruled  overlooked families and youths as one of the key contributors to last year’s UK riots. And following this, some Westminster MPs decided that all of the above tax changes were a proper course of action. With growth in reverse and prospects for youths few, it’s no wonder this government is thought of as backwards.

At least we’re of a generation that deems the stamp irrelevant…

Work out the tax changes to your life here.